In an industrial printing system, an industrial printer is typically configured to print different types of information on various types of information carriers, such as, items, products or articles. One example of an operation of such an industrial printer is the printing of print information on various types of packages or consumer goods. Commonly, such packages or consumer goods require a great deal of product identifications and content specifications, for example, traceability data, serial numbers, time and dates of packaging, expiry dates, etc. Therefore, the print information to be printed on the package or consumer goods may vary from one item to the next in a batch of items, from one batch of items to another, from one site of manufacture to another, from one time of manufacture to another, from one type of print technology to another, etc.
The print information may comprise both print information data and print information instructions. The print information data may comprise, for example, references to printer ready bitmap images, such as, e.g. barcodes, or the print ready information to be printed as is; while the print information instructions on the other hand may comprise, for example, code algorithms for the printer to determine print information data on-the-fly, i.e. as it is being printed, such as, e.g. incremental enumerations, or coded instructions indicating how the print information data is to be printed on the information carrier. This print information also conforms into a specific print information format.
The print information in the print information format may be provided to the industrial printer as part of the print data, i.e. print job data or print batch data controlling the industrial printer to start printing. The print information and print data may conventionally be manually generated via a print design tool or software running on a computer configured to communicate with the industrial printer.
However, with ever increasing global distribution networks, there is an issue with being capable of providing correct print information on items or packages that have to comply with different rules or regulations which depends on which country, market, calendar, language, date format, number format, font size, etc., that each individual item or package is designated for. Today, the responsibility lies with the operator of the industrial printer to ensure that the correct print information is printed on each individual item or package irrespective of designation of the individual item or package.